Management Matters - Business Is Personal

Management Matters: is
a New Article series dealing with the issues that
arise when managing personnel and how to optimize your
current staff in a company.

Business Is PersonalJanuary 1st, 2007

Harnessing emotions can influence the effective management
of a department, according to a recent article in The
Wall Street Journal online.

“Managers often think they should be impassive
and unemotional, and encourage their employees to be
the same. But emotions drive performance, and bosses
who don’t acknowledge their own and others’ temperaments
can't inspire the best work from their staffs – or
even motivate themselves,” advises the article
by Carol Hymowitz.

“If we’re preoccupied by worry, resentment
or boredom, our mental agility sputters,” said
Daniel Goleman, author of “Social Intelligence.” Goleman’s
books explores how relationships with bosses and colleagues,
family and friends, shape the brain and have physical
effects.

According to Goleman’s research, many executives
are too detached from their employees to recognize the
negative effects of keeping emotions in check – employees
and managers that are too focused on themselves and their
own issues, rather than the betterment of the company
and/or product, and thus boosting profit margins.